


Kingdom, Phylum, Class

by jolach



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Animal Death, First Time, Gratuitous Historical Inaccuracy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 12:23:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach
Summary: Watching Sasha, Nicklas finds it very easy to imagine a world where he doesn’t have to be king.





	Kingdom, Phylum, Class

There is a side door near the stables that Nicklas is not meant to know about, and he avails himself of it as soon as his horse is in someone else’s custody. Sasha follows.

Up the stairs two at a time, then two sharp lefts, and then Nicklas is in the kitchens. “Pardon me,” he says, ducking under the bunches of dried dill and parsley hanging from the ceiling. A young woman with arms full of fish freezes as he passes, apparently surprised to see the crown prince weaving in between the salted herring. She must be new.

From the kitchen it’s only a few strides down a corridor and through a set of heavy curtains to reach the great hearthroom. The fire is high, piled with yew if the soft smell is any indication. He was anticipated.

Not fully anticipated. Henrik is facing toward the main entrance, shifting his weight. “Henrik!” Nicklas says sharply, which is unkind of him, but the way the man whips around eases his spirits. “Good to see you.”

Henrik bows appropriately. “Welcome home, Your Highness,” he says. Nicklas doesn’t miss the glance he shoots over Nicklas’s shoulder as he straightens. He’s welcome to whatever face Sasha is making behind him. “The household rejoices to have you back, as always.”

“I rejoice to no longer be on a ship,” Nicklas says, stripping off his gloves and flexing his fingers. He eyes the hearthroom. Six weeks gone and not much has changed. The heavier tapestries are up, anticipating winter. The room is overwarm, and he sweats in his leather riding clothes. “I will leave the seafaring to my ancestors, I think.”

Sasha snorts. Henrik dips his head in acknowledgement, as he always does when Nicklas has said something that does not interest him. “How fare the people of Gottlandia?”

Nicklas wrinkles his nose and combs his fingers through his sweaty hair. “They are fed. For now.” It will not last; he had seen that for himself, even as he had rattled off inventories in conversation with the island’s baron. The man had said the right things about taking care of starving people, but Nicklas had seen no harm in making it clear that at least one royal knew every bale of barley, every smoked fish, every sack of turnips, and where each was meant to go.

The man had feasted Nicklas’s party with lamb and pigeon every night until a quiet word, run from Sasha through the barony’s household, had put a stop to it.

“His Majesty your father will I’m sure be eager to hear of it,” Henrik says. “He is engrossed in his correspondence at the moment, but he will have finished with that by supper.”

Perfect. Nicklas couldn’t have timed this better if he’d tried. “I’ve made an account of the trip and my findings,” he says, glancing backwards at Sasha, who has the bound sheaf in his hands and now steps forward to hand it over to Henrik. Nicklas will somewhat miss the sight of his house’s best warrior weighed down by details. “If my father is at his books, perhaps best just to add to them.”

Henrik cannot quite control his face as he takes the load from Sasha, which Nicklas finds gratifying. “You have been attentive to your duties, as always, Your Highness,” he says.

“Little else to do on a ship,” Nicklas says. Besides vomit. “I’d ask that someone review my sums, but the written account should be complete.” When you look famine in the face every day, the least you can do is write it down.

Henrik dips his head again. “Your Highness. May I tell the king to expect you at supper?”

“No,” Nicklas says. Henrik’s head snaps up, and out of the corner of his eye Nicklas can see Sasha turn to look at him as well. He hadn’t told him this bit. “I have missed solid ground. I’d like to get out of these clothes, but I’ll be leaving shortly.”

There is a solid vertical line between Henrik’s eyebrows. “Leaving? To where?” he says incredulously. “Your Highness,” he tacks on, remembering himself.

“Not far,” Nicklas says. “I will be hunting.”

“Your Highness would like to arrange a royal hunt?” Henrik says, and Nicklas can see the logistical necessities flying behind his eyes. It softens Nicklas’s mood slightly.

“No,” Nicklas says. He would not like half a hundred people in full regalia trailing behind him, blowing horns. “I would not like a hunt. I would like to hunt.” Why do they teach him how to do these things if they don’t want him to do them? “Sasha will come with me.” Henrik opens his mouth. “It isn’t a question.”

Henrik closes his mouth, shifts Nicklas’s notes in his arms, and lets a serene expression settle over his face. “Absolutely, Your Highness. What do you require?”

“I’ll ask no more of you,” Nicklas says. He turns to Sasha. “See if there are any fresh horses to be had?”

Sasha nods, a glint in his eye. “Dogs?”

Nicklas hadn’t thought about it. “Two,” he says, because if he doesn’t specify Sasha will bring the whole kennels along.

Henrik bows, clearly itching to leave. “When shall we expect your return, Your Highness?”

Nicklas looks over at Sasha again, who shrugs. Best not to push it. “Two days. Three at most.” He grins at the top of Henrik’s head. “Any longer and you can send the rest of the dogs after me.”

“Your Highness,” Henrik says, and makes his escape.

Nicklas turns to face Sasha. “How much time do you need?”

Sasha thinks a moment. “Two hours?” Nicklas nods. “You come to stables?”

Nicklas nods again. “I’ll have Johannson bring down the packs,” he says. Everything they’ll need to make camp should be prepared. “Take a look in them. If you have anything you’d like to bring, you’re welcome to.”

Sasha smiles. “Already say two dogs.”

 

* * *

 

Nicklas sends a well-laden Johansson off to the stables, changes from one set of riding clothes to another, retrieves his favorite yew bow from the fletcher, and heads out to meet Sasha. He goes out through the kitchens, collecting a dark loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, and two flagons of beer on the way. The rest of his food he’ll earn for himself.

 

* * *

 

The winds had been with them on the way home, and Nicklas is glad of it. It may be too cold for this in a week. But today the afternoon is still warm enough to ride without furs, and the river road leads into a forest that has not yet seen snow this year.

“So,” Sasha says, once they are under the treeline and beyond the sight of the keep, “What you wanna hunt?” He twists in his saddle to look at Nicklas. “Wild boar? Great moose?” He wags his eyebrows.

Nicklas rolls his eyes. “Hare,” he says flatly, and smiles as Sasha makes a great show of his disappointment. “Red deer, if we find any.”

Sasha turns to face front, watching the dogs lope ahead. Nicklas recognizes them as two of Sasha’s favorites, long-legged and floppy-eared sisters. “Should keep an eye on river, look for beaver sign,” Sasha says.

Nicklas makes a face at his back. “Surely you can’t want to eat that.”

Sasha laughs. “No, want furs,” he says. “Make beautiful rug, have warm feet always at home.”

Nicklas wishes he had brought something to write with. Yule will be upon them before long, and he should set aside some wool to be made into socks. Large socks.

They ride in silence. There’s a deer track further into the forest where they’ll dismount and continue on foot. Until then, Nicklas is content trail along, watching the late light play off of Sasha’s hair. The silver threads are too many to be counted, now.

God, but it feels good to be alone.

Six weeks traveling, six weeks surrounded by aides and servants and minor, grasping nobles. Six weeks used up, with maybe one day of it spent doing anything of value for the Gottlanders. Six weeks stopping at every keep on the way to port, taking their contributions for famine relief and knowing damn well there were silos full of surplus being held back, barons and lords smug in the knowledge that they had escaped whatever pestilence had wiped out Gottlandia’s harvest.

And him a prince, not able to do a damn thing about it.

It’s all written down, and there’s an outside chance he’ll be able to convince his father to let him make another trip with a sharper tone to his requests, but the snows will be down before long. Even if he made it to Gottlandia, he’d likely end up wintering there, sucking on stones and roasting rats.

Perhaps that would not be an unworthy way for a prince to spend his time.

Sasha spots the deer track first, and they both dismount, dogs twisting underfoot. Nicklas lets Sasha continue to lead as they head east and deeper into the forest. Nicklas is a reasonably skilled woodsman, all things considered, but there’s no reason to stand on pride.

The light fades, both from the sun dropping lower and the spruce boughs overhead. Other trees break through here and there, fighting for sunlight, but the spruce dominates, and the smell shakes some of the ache from Nicklas’s shoulders. The evening birds go silent as their party moves through the forest, but Nicklas can still hear them picking their songs up after they leave. There’s fresh deer tracks and scat on the path. This was a good idea.

Watching Sasha shoulder his way through encroaching branches, Nicklas finds it very easy to imagine a world where he doesn’t have to be king.

 

* * *

 

They find the clearing just before it would become truly stupid to keep walking. It’s big enough for the horses to graze, the remnant of some fire or lightning strike, and Nicklas walks its edges setting snares while Sasha puts up the tent.

“I step in one of those, getting up to piss in the night, you gonna be sorry,” Sasha says as Nicklas ambles back to toward him, dusting his hands on his breeches.

“I won’t,” Nicklas says, and Sasha laughs. “What else?” The tent is simple, and already looks well-raised. “Fire?”

Sasha nods. “You find wood, I get started?” he says, and Nicklas makes another circuit, collecting dry branches and sticks. He gives the dogs each a stick to chew on before dumping the rest next to Sasha and beginning to snap them into pieces roughly the same size.

They have a fire within half an hour, small but steady, and they sit by it eating bread and cheese while the dogs gnaw on dried pork that Sasha had brought along just for them. The horses, tethered, bed down. Beyond their circle: darkness. If they were home Nicklas would spend several more hours awake by candlelight, but the dark takes the shame out of his weariness.

His boots and jerkin are already off, folded and stacked next to his pack. In the tent he shucks his belt and breeches, leaving his soft tunic as guard against the cold as he crawls into his bedroll. Johansson did not need to include the sheepskin—it’s not that cold—but Nicklas admits he is happy to have it nonetheless. He is already dozing when he hears the soft slide of Sasha entering the tent.

Nicklas falls asleep with Sasha between him and the door, and the dogs beyond it.

 

* * *

 

Sasha is the earlier riser between the two of them, so Nicklas is not surprised to wake alone, even though the birdsong jerks him awake not long after dawn.

He pulls his clothes back on blearily and steps out of the tent with a squint. Sasha has rekindled the fire, and Nicklas feels a sluggish sort of pride when he sees two skinned hares spitted and ready for roasting.

“Good morning, Highness,” Sasha says, grinning toothily. The warmth of the day hasn’t set in yet, but Sasha is unbothered, stripped to the waist as he skins a third hare. The dogs sit beyond the fire, whining but well-trained.

“Somehow that always sounds different when you say it,” Nicklas says, stretching. “Must be the accent.”

“What accent?” Sasha says, and Nicklas returns his smile.

Nicklas has met other people with Sasha’s accent, but not many. Nicklas doesn’t know how much stronger it was when Sasha arrived; Nicklas was still a boy at the time, Sasha not much more than. They hadn’t known each other then, anyway. Nicklas had spotted him later, the tall dark-haired youth who had stood out from the other guardsmen like a bloody nose. He still stands out. The commander is meant to, generally.

They eat roast hare for breakfast, and Sasha neatly splits the third with his knife for the dogs to gobble up raw. Nicklas resets the snares, and Sasha nails the furs to a nearby tree to cure. Three hare pelts don’t amount to much, but if they can manage a few more the keep’s furrier ought to be able to make use of them.

The horses will have a day of rest; they’ll be no good for today’s work.

Nicklas leaves behind his jerkin, red with his family’s colors and entirely unsuitable, for a jacket of dark oxhide that will be less obvious against the trees. The day promises to be warm; he leaves it unbuttoned.

He brings his bow; a dozen arrows; what’s left of the cheese; one of the flagons of beer; a hooked knife for gutting; a rough wooden bowl; enough waxed canvas, folded up, to wrap up any meat they bring back.

Sasha insists on bringing his axe along, ostensibly because they could stumble upon a boar or a bear, really because he feels naked without it.

“I come along to protect prince, look pretty stupid if you get eaten, I say, sorry, only have little bow,” Sasha says as they weave through the underbrush.

“You can hunt bear with a crossbow,” Nicklas says. They should stop talking at some point. Not yet. “You’re not going to kill a bear with an axe, not even a greataxe. The bear will take your head off first.”

“Bear can try,” Sasha mutters, and Nicklas rolls his eyes to Heaven. “All right, we find bear, you protect me instead,” he says, as if he doesn’t know the difference between a longbow and a crossbow perfectly well. “Maybe you just order bear around, he have to listen.”

“Hasn’t worked so far,” Nicklas says, and they lapse eventually into sensible silence.

Nicklas blazes trees as they go, stripping bark away to reveal stark white flesh that will guide them back to camp. A mile or so deep, the ground feels softer under their feet: wet. There’s a pond, probably too small for fishing but big enough to be a watering hole. They spread out, moving downwind and settling into brush about twenty feet apart, and wait. All in silence.

The dogs stay with Sasha, tense and thrilled, but that’s how Nicklas prefers it. He wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway.

They wait.

Waiting, Nicklas has learned, is a skill, which means it needs to be practiced. Some things come easy for Nicklas. He’s always been comfortable on horseback. He’s a strong fencer. He can pick up a tune after hearing it once. He still practices these things, because he enjoys them.

He does not enjoy waiting, and he has practiced it quite a bit.

He knows to expect the way his muscles will cramp. How to focus his mind and ignore it. How his hands will go numb not from cold but from stillness.

The trick, he’s learned, is to let his mind go slack. He lets it slide out from underneath him, filling up the empty space instead of clutching at nothing. The soft sound of shed spruce needles hitting the ground. Morning light winking on the water. The low thrum of a toad somewhere to his left.

A toad? Or is it a frog? Are they both active during the day?

Nicklas shakes his head a little. Clear it out.

There are a few false starts. A swooping crow makes Nicklas jump and curse. Nicklas jumping and cursing makes Sasha laugh. A particularly bold squirrel manages to break the dogs from their training, crashing through the brush as it scurries up a tree, and Sasha has to spend ten minutes calming them down again.

In time all settles again, and Nicklas breathes deep and slow until he swears he can hear Sasha breathing too.

A flash of wing. Twin landings on the water. Two wood ducks late flying south. Nicklas whistles looping and low, a passable thrush call, and shoots. He goes left. Sasha will go right. They both strike true.

Sasha gives a word, and the dogs bound forward into the water. Nicklas stays where he is, one knee in the mud, as Sasha strides out of the brush, calling and cooing as the dogs paddle back, each with a long neck in their mouth.

Sasha freezes in the sun, which is the only reason Nicklas looks west and sees the deer.

It can’t take more than five seconds. It feels like five minutes, an hour, but it’s done before the dogs even reach the shore.

What slows time down is the way the animal looks at him.

The red stag is beautiful, five tines on each antler, shaggy-throated and proud. The rut should still be on; this stag should not be alone. Nicklas doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He doesn’t know why he isn’t running.

The stag is stock still, and it’s looking at Sasha.

Of course, Nicklas thinks, for a moment, mad. It recognizes him.

Nicklas draws, aims, and shoots the stag through the throat.

By the time Nicklas reaches the body, pulling the bowl from his bag, Sasha is already there, and the deer is already dead or nearly so.

“The old way?” Sasha says, arm around the stag’s head and long knife to its throat.

“Do it,” Nicklas says, and catches the blood in the bowl as Sasha opens its throat.

There’s a yew on the north side of the pond, and Nicklas scatters the blood over its roots. He taps his forehead against the bark and whispers the words. He likes the chapel his grandfather had added to the keep. He likes the stained glass, and the songs, and the quiet, and the Christ, who seems like a reasonable sort of god. But there are some things that don’t go away.

Sasha has already opened the chest when he walks back. “Let me,” Nicklas says, stooping and holding it open. Sasha grunts and reaches in to pull out the entrails, steaming.

Nicklas remembers the first time he saw entrails come out of a man. Sasha was there, too, at his back the first time Nicklas had cut a man down, caught unawares too close to the border. The first time Nicklas had seen a friend fall.

Nicklas had ridden all night, which had been foolish, changing horses three times to bring the body back to the parents, to stand mute and useless while his friend’s mother cried and his friend’s father shouted at him. Sasha had been there, yes, there as well, at Nicklas’s shoulder, kind enough to let a soft prince pretend his tears went unseen. Wise enough to force him to accept the offered bed, and wise enough to sleep between him and the door.

How many years ago now? Numbers have never been Nicklas’s strength.

They skin the carcass, quarter it, and butcher it in silence, practiced hands red to the elbows.

The stag was large; the butchering takes two hours. They split the meat between them, wrapped up against flies, and hang their bags in a tree. Each dog gets a femur to keep them occupied. Each man washes his hands in the pond, then strips to the waist. Nicklas scrubs his face with a handful of water, cutting through dried sweat and certainly blood. Sasha dunks his whole head underwater, strong back bent, sitting up and shaking his head like one of his dogs.

Nicklas splutters against the spray. “Animal,” he says, voice thick with disuse.

Sasha just grins. “Best one,” he says, and Nicklas will concede the point.

They leave the bones piled at the yew tree. The take the antlers, sawed off at the root at Sasha’s insistence.

The long walk back to camp feels faster than it was in the morning, and even in the afternoon light the blazes are clear. There is work still to be done—smoking some of the meat, hanging the rest up where bears might leave it be, plucking the birds—but Nicklas feels satisfaction and exhaustion lay over his shoulders like so much fur.

At camp, Nicklas acquiesces to Sasha’s sideways suggestion that he do the work that can be done seated. He stokes the fire, laying on wet wood that smokes up and begins to cure cuts of venison. He plucks the feathers from the birds, inspecting the blue-violet plumage on the wing and setting aside those that the fletcher might make use of. He watches Sasha work, which is a labor in and of itself.

Sasha, with his silver-black hair, overlong, still wet. With sweat sticking his tunic to the small of his back. With his blunt fingers, quick. Sasha, a man, more a man than anyone Nicklas has ever met, a man to the point of ridiculousness.

It’s hardly unheard of. It might be easier if it were.

Nicklas is too old by far now for rolls in the hay. And Sasha is hardly a tumble.

Nicklas lays the trussed ducks on the hot coals of the fire and listens as the dripping fat spits and crackles. He takes his boots off. He takes his jacket off. He rolls it up and lays it under his head, staring up through the hole in the forest and digging his toes into the grass.

The horses whicker. The dogs tussle happily over a bone. Nicklas closes his eyes and tries to remember.

“Sleep already?” Sasha rumbles above him, and Nicklas opens his eyes. Sasha looms, evening sun behind his head, and Nicklas hopes he won’t have to explain why he laughs. “Letting me do all the work?”

“Yes,” Nicklas says, smiling, holding his gaze and not getting up.

“Is all right,” Sasha says, folding himself down by the fire. “Hard to be Highness.”

Nicklas rolls himself up onto an elbow. Sasha is shining with sweat, hands dusty from the oats for the horses. Nicklas wonders, sometimes, about where he comes from. Are all the men there like this? “I should have you go wash again,” Nicklas says idly.

Sasha shrugs. “River is far, would be sweat again by the time I was back,” he says, and grins. “You alone in the dark.”

“I’ve been alone in the dark before,” Nicklas says.

Sasha shrugs again. “I know.” He pulls a stick from the kindling pile and pokes at the ducks, rotating them. “Smells good.”

Nicklas sits fully up, unrolls his jacket, and fishes in the inner pocket for a handkerchief. Sasha takes it with a pleased noise. He wipes off his face, his hands, each finger, the back of his neck.

“Keep it,” Nicklas says, and Sasha laughs in his face. Nicklas grins back at him. “You need it more.”

“Thank you, Highness,” Sasha says, with that tone Nicklas never knows how to take. “Best favor I ever wear.”

Nicklas puts all his royal blood into an affronted noise. “Who else is giving you favors?” he says, imperious, and Sasha laughs and laughs and laughs.

The ducks are crispy and perfect, and Nicklas burns his fingers on them happily, pulling off a wing. Sasha rips into a breast with his teeth, tearing off a strip of meat and moaning happily.

“I take back, you do best work,” he says, sucking grease off his wrist.

“Thank the ducks,” Nicklas says, and takes a bite.

Sasha dumps the bones away from their clearing, and Nicklas keeps the fire alive, light licking up the trees as night comes in properly. They finish the last of the beer, passing the flagon back and forth carefully; they’ll have to boil river water tomorrow.

They’ll have to go home the day after that.

“You know,” Nicklas says, and it’s amazing how easily things slip out alone in the dark, “It wasn’t always—” He starts again, the fire and the beer and the sleeping dogs asking him to tell a story. “It used to be—in the old way. Their kings were different.”

Sasha doesn’t say anything, but when Nicklas glances over he’s watching, face lit up by flame.

“It wasn’t by blood,” Nicklas continues. “It was—they chose their strongest to lead them.” The fire spits, green wood popping. “Did you know that?”

“Highness,” Sasha says, and there’s still warmth in his eyes, but something else, too.

The stars look down, but there’s no moon tonight. “You have nothing to fear from me,” Nicklas says.

“No?” Sasha says, and his teeth flash when he smiles. He snaps a twig into tiny pieces and throws them on the fire. “I know about old kings.”

Nicklas watches him. He is perfect in firelight, shining gold at his throat and lighting his hair up silver. “I think you would be one.”

Sasha does not move. Nicklas has waited enough for today.

“I think, if things were different, you would be a king, and I would not,” Nicklas says, and the fire sends up a rush of sparks.

Sasha’s body is still, but his eyes flick over to meet Nicklas’s. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then starts again. “If things were different, I would be dead,” Sasha says, sure, as he always is. “And I think you do not know yourself so much as you think.”

A secondary warmth rushes through Nicklas, inside out. He is tired of waiting, but Sasha must have whatever choice Nicklas can give him.

“If things were different,” Nicklas says, careful, “And you were a king, and I were a prince.” He pauses, but Sasha doesn’t look away this time. “And we found each other here. What would happen.”

Sasha gives a tiny shake of his head, and looks down at his hands. “What usually happens between princes and kings?”

“They do what they please,” Nicklas says. “I can show you.” He clambers to his feet, muscles tight from hours on the ground. He’d normally do this in a doublet and a crown, but he doesn’t need them. He pushes the sleeves of his tunic up from his wrists and places his bare feet at an elegant angle. “It is easier if you stand.”

Sasha rolls his eyes, thrillingly, and stands, rubbing his hands on his breeches. His shadow is long against the trees.

“If I met someone of equal rank,” Nicklas says, placing one foot carefully in front of the other, “I might do this.” He bends at the waist slightly, one arm behind his back. The hum of nighttime insects rises, but that may be only his own blood in his ears.

He looks up, still in a slight bow, and meets Sasha’s eyes. The fire is in them now.

Nicklas straightens slightly, keeping his arm behind his waist. “And if we were intimate friends,” he says, trailing off and holding out his other hand.

Sasha stares at it like Nicklas is holding a severed head. “I can’t,” he says. Nicklas knows how little Sasha touches him, can’t remember contact beyond the battlefield or preparing for it, and something in him howls to learn that all these years it was by design.

“Kings and princes do as they please,” Nicklas says again. It’s a lie, and Sasha knows it’s a lie, but here and now it feels true. Nicklas curls his fingers just slightly, letting the firelight trip across them. “What pleases you?”

Sasha’s palm is warm and rough against his. Nicklas had not planned beyond this, but he hadn’t needed to. It’s so obvious, now, to close his fingers over Sasha’s, to lift their hands and press Sasha’s knuckles to his lips.

“This is what I would do,” he mumbles against skin, and it’s true. If Sasha had been wiped from his life and walked for the first time out from those trees, in finery or furs or naked, Nicklas would know him for what he was.

Sasha does not deny it, or laugh at him, or pull away, or give voice to the wild noises in Nicklas’s chest.

Sasha, grip like a vice on Nicklas’s hand, sinks to one knee and presses his forehead to Nicklas’s thigh.

Nicklas reaches out despite himself, threading his fingers through the hair at Sasha’s crown. “Kings don’t kneel for princes,” he says, and the forest is so loud, thrumming around them.

“I always kneel,” Sasha says, his free hand pressing possessively up Nicklas’s lower back. “Whatever you are.”

Nicklas cracks open, sways on his feet. He lets Sasha haul him down when his knees give way. Sasha’s hands, Sasha’s hands, holding him together, smearing across his cheek. Nicklas feels the whole world around them stand at attention, every tree matched to a brand new nerve ending catching light.

“I would kiss you,” Nicklas says, mouth already swollen with it, and Sasha swallows it for him, beard rough and lips salted.

Of course Sasha never wanted to touch him. One kiss and Nicklas is ready to walk into a stone circle with him and never come out. Sasha presses up against his front, hard and human, and Nicklas is ready to die.

He bites at Sasha’s lips to hear him gasp, slides his fingers under Sasha’s collar to feel him shiver. “I would,” Nicklas sighs between bites, helpless. “I would.”

Sasha sits back, breaking away from Nicklas for just a moment to pull his tunic over his head in one motion. The fire roars. Nicklas sees Sasha stripped all the time. He saw him so today, this morning.

Nicklas has never looked at Sasha like this while Sasha looks back.

Nicklas crawls between Sasha’s knees, grabs the back of his neck, and buries his face in his throat. He takes deep draughts, memorizing the smell of him. He knows it already. He will know it anywhere now.

Sasha grabs at Nicklas’s legs, hauling him into his lap properly, and Nicklas bites at his throat in pleasure. It’s right. It’s right, what they’re doing. He is needed here, tonight.

Sasha runs his hands up the bare skin of his back and slips the worn fabric free over his head. Gooseflesh rises on Nicklas’s arms. He isn’t cold. Sasha presses gentle kisses to his shoulders and digs his fingers into his sides hard enough to bruise and Nicklas loves him, he loves him, he loves him.

Nicklas slides a hand into Sasha’s hair, pulling his head back just enough to make Sasha gasp and grin, and he kisses him, swallowing up the sounds that he makes, ravenous. Sasha holds him with both hands and crushes him close, and they both shake when Nicklas rocks down against him.

Nicklas has never cared for the involuntary aspects of sex, the way his body makes its own decisions, but he exults in it now. He exults in what Sasha’s body says back, each overlapping yes, every moment yes. The drag of Sasha’s breaths yes, the flush down Sasha’s chest yes, Sasha’s tongue in his mouth yes.

The new tension in Sasha’s thighs is his only warning, and then Sasha rolls them over, Nicklas landing flat on his back in the grass with Sasha already at his throat. Nicklas has stopped trying to be quiet, baying his victory when Sasha’s teeth dig in. The dogs don’t even stir. They’ve seen a rut before.

Sasha’s hands on him don’t change Nicklas’s mind about him. What he would be. What he _is_. Nicklas has seen death at those hands, and he wants them in his mouth. That is an ancient feeling. Nicklas is happy to let it consume him.

Sasha’s fingers fumble at his laces, slipping one hand in first to stroke him roughly and another to slide his breeches down his thighs. “What I would do,” Sasha says, voice heavy as Nicklas twists up into his hand, eyes lifted to Heaven. “If I found you here.” He kisses the pale softness of Nicklas’s belly, eyes dark. “I would keep you,” he growls, and takes Nicklas in his mouth.

Nicklas shouts, Nicklas pulls handfuls of grass from the earth, Nicklas pushes up shamelessly into Sasha’s mouth and rejoices to be pinned back down without mercy. Sasha’s mouth, sure as the rest of him and devastating, too, pulling Nicklas inside out. Taking him.

Nicklas can feel himself winding tighter, chasing Sasha toward the edge. He wants it, he wants it, but he wants it a different way, and he strokes helplessly at Sasha’s face. “Sasha,” he says, reedy and blown-out. Sasha looks up at him without pulling off, and Nicklas’s head thunks back into the grass. “Sasha, you bastard, come back,” he manages, chest heaving, and that’s enough. Sasha trails back up his body, nosing at him, mouth red and wet.

“Sasha,” Nicklas says again, and when he paws at Sasha’s waist Sasha grins.

“You would have me naked?” he says, doing nothing to help as Nicklas unlaces him.

“I would, I would have you,” Nicklas says, and Sasha kisses him, slick and maddening. A moment for each of them to fully free themselves of the last of their clothes, and then Nicklas has what he wants. He has so much. Sasha’s mouth on his mouth, panting and desperate, Sasha’s hands on his wrists, holding him down, Sasha between his legs, hard and sweet and his.

His, freely offered, greedily taken, the oldest magic Nicklas knows.

Nicklas has what he wants, and it fills him up, and it fills up the clearing, and it fills up the forest, and it’s only a moment until Nicklas is arching and bucking, coming and crying Sasha.

Sasha is bent to Nicklas’s shoulder, shaking with the strain of holding still, and Nicklas uses the last of his strength to cup his face and urge him on. “It’s yours, it’s yours,” Nicklas babbles, glorying in the feeling of Sasha thrusting against the mess on his stomach. “I would,” he says, tipping his chin up to find Sasha’s lips again, clumsy, “I would know you, I would—” and then Sasha comes, and trembles, and says Nicklas’s name for the first time.

 

* * *

 

They make it to the tent before sleep takes them. Sasha fishes the handkerchief out from his clothes and cleans them both off to the best of his ability, hands shaking, and then they stagger into the tent on wobbling legs.

Nicklas falls asleep with his hand in Sasha’s hair.

 

* * *

 

He wakes with a start in the middle of the night.

He listens hard while his vision adjusts, frozen still and waiting to hear if something in particular woke him. There’s nothing, though. Just the same hum and chirp of insects. He’s just awake.

He turns his his head and looks down at Sasha. Whatever plucked Nicklas from sleep hasn’t touched him, though it does seem that Nicklas has been sleeping on one of his arms.

Sasha’s half-kicked off his blankets. He’s like a furnace. No wonder he’s always taking his clothes off; Nicklas can feel the heat from his skin without even touching him.

Nicklas still wants to touch him.

First he looks. Nicklas pulls the blanket covering him the rest of the way off; Sasha doesn’t even stir. Even in sleep he looks dangerous, to the world at large and to Nicklas in particular.

Alone in the dark again, Nicklas chokes on fear. He’s afraid of many things, more than he can count, but what has him by the throat is new. Nicklas is seized with a panic that this madness will not matter. That the spell will break come morning, that Sasha will want to forget, or that Nicklas will and Sasha will forgive him. One mistake, unrepeated, easily written off.

Nicklas feels fear all the time. He isn’t a coward.

He reaches out and rubs soft circles on Sasha’s stomach, then bends his head to kiss the same spot when Sasha starts to stir. Nicklas bides his time, running his hands up and down Sasha’s thighs. There’s so much of him, and Nicklas has so little time.

Sasha makes a groggy sound, almost a laugh. “I’m...dream,” he says somewhere above Nicklas, and Nicklas smiles against Sasha’s hip.

“Good dream?” Nicklas asks, tracing the tip of his nose lightly through Sasha’s thick hair.

Sasha’s breath catches. “Oh, best one,” he says, and Nicklas goes to work.

 

* * *

 

The next time Nicklas wakes up, it’s with Sasha’s hand on his shoulder and sun shining through the tent flap. Nicklas makes an undignified noise, and Sasha laughs at him.

“Don’t have to get up,” Sasha says, a hand flat on his chest. “But we need water. I’m going to go get.”

Nicklas’s head feels thick and heavy. “You’re going?”

“Come back quick,” Sasha says, thumbing over Nicklas’s collarbone. “Just don’t want you wake up alone.”

“So you decided to wake me up first,” and he’s being a prick, but Sasha should be used to it.

Sasha raises his eyebrows. “I think I remember you waking me up.”

Nicklas lets his head fall back on the pillow. “I was...nicer.”

Sasha laughs and starts to leave. “Most nice.”

“Come back,” Nicklas says, rolling on his side and reaching for a blanket.

“I come back,” Sasha calls from outside.

“Come back _here,_ ” Nicklas says, mostly to himself, and slips back into sleep.

 

* * *

 

The third time he wakes, Sasha is back, laid out next to him with his head pillowed on his forearms. He’s naked, and Nicklas can’t decide if he’s more charmed by the prospect of him hiking a mile to the river and back that way or the idea that Sasha stripped back down to join him on equal terms.

His hair is damp. “Did you wash?” Nicklas says, and Sasha’s eyes snap open.

“Yes,” he says, soft smile in his voice.

Nicklas groans and stretches. “Leaving me to be disgusting all by myself.”

Sasha shifts closer, until they are nearly nose-to-nose. “Pleases me,” he says, and Nicklas can see the sparkle in his eyes as he tips his head to kiss him.

The inside of the tent is a little over-warm, air trapped and baking in the sun. It makes Nicklas lazy, happy to do nothing but scratch his nails through Sasha’s hair and be kissed. Sasha hums happily in his hands. All of it, every second, is a miracle.

When Sasha pulls away, Nicklas keeps a hand on his face and searches his eyes. No one knows him better, but Nicklas still feels compelled to confess. “I can offer you nothing,” he says, barely above a whisper.

Sadness flickers over Sasha’s face. “Who gets more?” he shrugs, stroking Nicklas’s hair off his forehead, and Nicklas blinks. “Split between everyone. I think I have more than my share.” Nicklas finds himself choking on something again, and Sasha takes pity on him with another kiss.

Later, Nicklas lies on Sasha’s chest, counting his breaths. “I have story for you,” Sasha says, and Nicklas feels the words as much as he hears them. “About old kings.” Nicklas’s eyes drift up. “I think maybe I know more than you think.”

Nicklas shifts, letting his chin dig into Sasha’s ribs. “Say I am old king, like you say,” Sasha says, picking up one of Nicklas’s hands. “Big, strong, handsome,” he says, counting off on Nicklas’s fingers, and Nicklas stifles a laugh. “Everything great. Happy people. Many babies.” He closes Nicklas’s hand into a fist. “But then, not so great. Lose war. Big sickness come. Nothing grow. Cows all die.” He opens Nicklas’s hand again and lifts it, placing it around his own throat. “What happen to me?”

“I know,” Nicklas says softly, stroking his thumb over a vein in Sasha’s neck.

“But really,” Sasha says, letting go of Nicklas’s hand. Nicklas keeps it where it is. “Is not so bad for me. I know my job. Things get bad, I just have to die,” he says, smiling crookedly. He reaches out and tucks a curl behind Nicklas’s ear. “Harder, maybe, to have war, sickness. Famine. And have to still be king.” Nicklas closes his eyes. “Hard to be king in winter,” Sasha says, softly, and Nicklas turns his face into Sasha’s hand, overcome.

 

* * *

 

Sasha coaxes Nicklas out of the tent with the promise of breakfast. It’s well past noon, but food is as good a reason as any. Nicklas also isn’t fooled by the poorly-hidden glee on Sasha’s face, but that’s just another reason to go along.

After they greet the dogs, Sasha leads Nicklas by the wrist over to a small bundle near the fire. “Got lucky walking to river,” he says, and shows him.

There’s four eggs, probably some sort of quail going by the size. Two handfuls of beechnuts, shelled. A handful of lingonberries.

“Saw mushrooms, too, but didn’t want to risk,” Sasha says, making a face. Nicklas is, in the moment, certain that the mushrooms would have been delicious, served up by the forest for a favorite son with love. He’s hardly going to discourage Sasha’s rare prudence, though.

Sasha restarts the fire while Nicklas chews on some venison and feeds the horses. Once he gets food in him, he realizes he’s ravenous.

“Hmm,” Sasha says, smugly, raising his eyebrows as Nicklas starts on a second strip of jerky.

“Quiet,” Nicklas says, mouth full.

Fatty cuts from the hindquarters of the deer go in the pan first, with the eggs joining them when the grease is hot. The beechnuts go straight on the hot coals of the fire to roast. The lingonberries don’t survive long, victims of Nicklas’s impatience that stain his fingers red.

“Leave me some,” Sasha says, poking at the fire, “I work, you eat everything, very selfish.”

“It’s your fault I’m so hungry,” Nicklas says, popping another berry in his mouth and grinning when Sasha whips his head around.

“ _My_ fault—” he says, incredulous, and then he’s abandoned the fire to catch Nicklas by the wrists, laughing, and Nicklas smears red juice all over his face.

 

* * *

 

They trek back to the river in the late afternoon for more water, leaving the dogs behind to keep the horses company.

They don’t find a beaver dam. Sasha will have to find his rug elsewhere. They do find a narrow and shallow point, though, barely more than a stream, and when Nicklas sees the boulder splitting it in two he gives into the youthful impulse to summit it, leaving his boots on the riverbank.

Sasha squints up at him, seated atop the rock with his heels kicking lightly against it. “And you say you don’t wanna be in charge,” Sasha says, sly.

“I never said that,” Nicklas says, and then offers Sasha a hand up.

They sit there a while, staring downriver as the water splits around them and then rejoins. Nicklas used to play a game with other children of his father’s court. Standing on a bridge, they’d each throw sticks over the side, then race to the other side of the bridge to see whose stick would come into view first. Nicklas wonders how far a stick would get if you tossed it into the water here.

“You wanna run, we can run,” Sasha says, and he does Nicklas the favor of making it sound like a joke. “Cut your hair, mess up clothes. Just keep west, see what we find.”

Nicklas sighs. “Trees, probably.”

“Definitely trees,” Sasha says, knocking their knees together. “Trees not so bad. Don’t need much.”

Nicklas gives Sasha a sidelong look. “Not sure you’d be happy using your axe for firewood.”

Sasha clicks his tongue. “Ah, don’t worry about me. Always find something to fight.”

Nicklas frowns and takes a moment to listen to the soft babble of the running water. “Someone has to take care of the place.” He glances over at Sasha’s hands. “Choose the fights.”

“There are other heirs,” Sasha says. “Cousins,” and the lightness of his tone makes Nicklas smile.

“Oh, yes,” Nicklas says, “I’ll just let Andre handle it, thank you, Sasha, why didn’t I think of that,” and Sasha has dissolved in giggles, and Nicklas reaches out to hold his hand without pretense.

 

* * *

 

Another night by the fire. Different this time.

Nicklas leans against a saddlebag, dragged over to serve as a pillow. Sasha is laid out with his head in Nicklas’s lap, knife at work with one of the antlers from yesterday’s kill.

“You are crazy,” Sasha had said when Nicklas had suggested leaving them behind. “Good for buttons, jewelry, carving, anything. Not just for hanging on wall. I will make something, you will see.”

Nicklas runs his hand absently through Sasha’s hair and hums. Sasha pushes his hand back against the pressure and growls happily.

“Will you sing me something?” Sasha asks, not looking up, and Nicklas feels something pop in his chest. He would normally demur. Tonight is different. And after all, there’s no one else for miles.

“What sort of song?”

Sasha makes a face. “Not church, please.” Fair enough. What Nicklas likes best about the hymns is the harmony of them, people raising their voices in a group. He can’t carry that on his own.

He casts his mind back for songs he learned from nurses, from servants, from other children, old songs that get passed along without being taught.

He clears his throat, hums a little to find the pitch, and tries his best.

 _In our meadow, blueberries grow._  
_Come, joy from the heart._  
_If you need me, find me there._  
_Come, joy from the heart._  
_If you want, I’ll tie you a crown of flowers._  
_Come, lilies and columbines, come, roses and sage,_  
_Come, sweet spearmint, come, joy from the heart._  
  
Sasha still has the antler and the knife in his hands, but they’ve gone still. Nicklas pauses, still carding his fingers through Sasha’s hair.

“What is a columbine?” Sasha asks, quietly.

“Oh,” Nicklas says, thinking. “It’s a purple flower. Spiked at the back, a little.” They have some in the gardens, though Nicklas doesn’t think they use them for anything. “I can show you in the spring.”

Sasha makes a soft sound of agreement. “Keep going,” he says, and as Nicklas picks the tune back up again so Sasha busies his hands.

 

* * *

 

“If you want go back, we can go back,” Sasha almost whispers, nose-to-nose with Nicklas in the tent.

Nicklas does not particularly want to go back home, but after a moment he realizes what Sasha means. “To Gottlandia.”

“It is not I am so eager to get on a boat with you again—” Sasha says, and even in the dark Nicklas can pinch him and make him bark. “Ugh, I am support, and still you are mean,” he says, and this time Nicklas silences him with a kiss.

When they break apart, Nicklas rests his forehead against Sasha’s. “I’ll need a writ from my father,” he says, “For it to make any difference.” As much as he’d love for the two of them to just ride the countryside, shaking noblemen upside down until barley fell out of their pockets, that won’t go far enough.

“So you get,” Sasha says, sounding certain. “Nicklas, you are prince,” he says. _“And_ you are right. Strong together.”

Nicklas, safe in the dark, lets himself smile the way he wants to. “And I have you.”

“And me,” Sasha says. “Should be enough for one winter,” he says, and Nicklas kisses him again.

 

* * *

 

Sasha begs, and bargains, and leaves a bitemark on Nicklas’s chest that will last for a week, and somewhere after midnight Nicklas gives in, letting Sasha herd him, naked, out of the tent and up against a tree so Sasha can drop to his knees and make him howl.

 

* * *

 

Nicklas had half-intended to stay up all night, as if he might forestall the morning by facing it head-on, but sleep outflanks him, and he wakes up with his nose pressed in Sasha’s side.

“Good morning, Highness,” Sasha rumbles, and Nicklas squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.

He lifts himself up on an elbow. “Five more minutes,” he says, scratching his fingers through Sasha’s beard. It’s already visibly longer just from the few days they’ve been here.

Sasha looks at him, and there’s a twist to his mouth that Nicklas knows. Sasha is a commander of men; he’s used to layabouts. “Have to pack up,” Sasha says.

“Five more minutes,” Nicklas says again. They are both commanders of men.

Sasha softens around the eyes just slightly, though it looks like it costs him. “Nicklas, then,” he says, and Nicklas spends his five minutes on Sasha’s fingers, his wrists, the sharp rise of his cheeks.

Aside from the ashes of the fire and the flattened grass where the tent had been, the clearing looks the same when they leave. The next rain will wipe away those signs, too.

The morning is clear and cold, but Nicklas still forgoes furs as they walk through the forest. His leather gloves and jerkin, red and buttoned up to the throat, will do. A little numbness won’t kill him.

Sasha leads the way through the woods, but when they reach the river road and mount their horses, Nicklas urges his forward so that they may walk abreast in silence. Their hoofbeats are muffled by a new layer of shed leaves from the beeches that mingle with the spruce. The river rushes. It even sounds cold.

A gash of raw wood, almost white in the light, catches Nicklas’s eye. He pulls his horse up short. “Sasha, look,” he says, and Sasha looks with a frown from Nicklas to where he points. He raises his eyebrows when he spots it.

“Beaver sign,” Sasha says. If a beaver took a tree here, the dam it’s building can’t be that far away.

The dogs circle their horses, wagging their tails. “You want to go find it?” Nicklas asks. “Get your rug?”

Sasha opens his mouth, closes it. Looks at the river and looks at Nicklas. “Not enough time,” he says, and Nicklas’s heart sinks. They get their horses moving again, slow but steady. “Anyway,” Sasha says, feigning nonchalance, “We come back later.” He reaches out to hook two gloved fingers, deliberately, into Nicklas’s reins.

He glances over as he lets go, and Nicklas does not try to hide his grin. Sasha rolls his eyes. “Stop being idiot, put cloak on,” he says. “You are shivering.”

 

* * *

 

When Nicklas packs for a winter on a starving island, he brings little in the way of personal belongings. Most of what they’ll carry they’ll acquire on the road.

He brings an empty ledger and as much ink as can be had. He slides a small wooden flute into a pack, an early gift from his mother that he has not yet learned how to play.

He brings his bow, more for something to do than because he thinks he’ll have cause to draw it. “Isn’t that what I have you for?” he asks, and Sasha laughs, flipping his knife with its new bone-white handle in his hand.

Nicklas brings as little regalia as he can get away with, a coronet set with pearls and an ermine mantle wrapped up under Johannson’s watchful eye. On the road, he’ll wear a heavy signet ring, as if his men might otherwise forget who he is.

He makes room for one more piece of jewelry, tucked into a buttoned pocket, safe. Gold has never suited him. Alone, he favors a simple ring, a little overlarge but comfortable to slip on his thumb, carved from what might be bone into the crude shape of a crown.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Nicklas sings is a condensed interpretation of the Swedish folk song Uti Vår Hage. I recommend Sven-Bertil Taube’s version, which is on Spotify, or Kraja’s version on YouTube. 
> 
> All historical and cultural details are handwave-y and/or based on a bare-minimum Google. Apologies for anything grossly inaccurate.
> 
> Love and gratitude to [kingsoftheimpossible](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/) and [angularmomentum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum) for enhoggling me in the first place and tirelessly shouting me onwards. Anything you love OR hate about this is on them; I am accountable for nothing.
> 
> If you'd like to yell at me anyway, comments are, of course, cherished. You can also find me on Tumblr @ [hyggles](http://hyggles.tumblr.com/).


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